Seto Kaiba

Ooookay... I'm not sure why MEMO thinks this is a revelation or anything unexpected? It doesn't mean Warner's serious about the Robotech-in-name-only live action movie, it's standard practice for any film with merchandising potential. If they didn't retain merchandising rights to a movie they made and it became a hit, the stockholders would crucify them. It doesn't mean Warner's fast-tracking the movie because it's a sure-fire success. It doesn't even mean Warner thinks they'll make the movie. All they're doing is hedging their bets while they have the license. Business as usual... the illiterate idiots of the Robotech lunatic fringe see a perfectly mundane piece of film industry news and assume that it means great things are happening for Robotech, and that the live-action movie is destined for greatness. It'd be hilarious if they didn't do it every other week.

After a cursory review of the original Compendium articles, they're definitely intended to denote old data that's been revised/retconned. Atmospheric thrust ratings are, on the few times they're provided, noted explicitly and separately, as on the YF-19 article. It seems safe to say the FAQ statement about the use of brackets applies across the entire site. In any case, it appears that the VF-19S's original thrust figure of 68,500kgf x 2 was revised to 78,950kgf x 2 almost right away. If your old print-out of the Compendium doesn't have the VF-19F thrust figure of 72,500kgf x 2, then that might explain what the motivation for the change was... keeping it in line with the general practice of having officer units with slightly greater engine power than the standard variant. What I think happened here is the Master File's writers decided to delay publication of the VF-19 book until they could make sure their numbers were in line with Chronicle, and as a result inadvertently duplicated the typos printed in Chronicle. It's not gonna stop me from buying the VF-19 Master File. Even if it isn't canon and it has a few mistakes, it's still wicked cool stuff. You're not alone in that... that's how I initially read it too.

Okay... I see two problems with this, but you've already foreseen one of them. The key that Egan provided (and Sketchley pointed out, and then resolutely ignored as soon as he'd noticed it contradicted his own argument) indicates that the data in brackets is material that's been revised/retconned. For reasons we can only guess at, the original number you found (68,500 x 2) was revised/retconned to 78,950 x 2. This brought the -S variant's performance into line with what we'd expect from a "leader" model. The change was apparently made fairly soon after the original number came out... even the earliest iterations of the Compendium article I could recover (1997 October 04) list the revised thrust rating of 78,950kgf x 2. Why wouldn't they optimize it for space? If we take Chronicle at face value, that's not the first time that's happened either (in-universe). If memory serves, the VF-4 was the main space bird of its day, while the VF-5000 was for planetside shenanigans. It feels weird for me to read about that too... an odd case of Macross II-isms intruding onto the main continuity. (Now if the linear actuator turns out to be Zentradi tech, you'll see what happens when my brain does the equivalent of a 4-to-1 downshift without the aid of a clutch) Still, as you've pointed out the idea that they would sacrifice the VF-19S's performance in space in exchange for enhanced atmospheric performance makes no sense either. I guess we could take the approach Mr March did in our analysis of it on M3...

Issues of giant robot feasibility aside, Kawamori and co. have at least a half-decent working grasp of the physics involved in powered flight and aerodynamics. It seems rather unfeasible that they intentionally generated an error that basic and obvious when they had a perfectly viable number that under which the other assertions about its flight performance (comparatively with the VF-19F) fit just fine.

Thanks for that... that's a big help. Now we know where the VF-19S's original (pre-1st revision) thrust figure comes from. Still gotta figure out where the revised figure of 78,950 that preceded Chronicle's odd assertion of 68,950 came from. Putting aside the questions of the source's accuracy, that would be a highly plausible explanation for the VF-19P being sold with the same engines as the military model, but lower thrust ratings. Detuning the engines would lower the fighter's performance, but extend their operating lifespan... thus reducing the maintenance costs. Something that, given that in the official continuity sources reduced cost has been a major factor in colonial gov't decisions to adopt various models of VF. The thrust ratings on Egan's site make sense and support the related assertions we're being asked to accept... IE that the VF-19S has a superior rate of climb and a higher top speed. The new numbers don't. That's a pretty clear indication that something's amiss. I do wonder when the 78,950 figure came along... somehow I have a feeling it came along when they introduced the 72,500 figure for the VF-19F, to keep with the established convention that "leader" variants have more powerful engines than the grunt version. EDIT: Gone back to the earliest editions of the Compendium (1997 version of the VF-19 article) and the amended numbers of 72,500 for the VF-19F and 78,950 for the VF-19S are still there. No indication of source, but that change was clearly made fairly soon after that model kit came out, no later than 4 October 1997. That it hasn't been altered in better than a decade of updates and maintenance seems like a fair indication that it's accurate, whatever the source was.

The temptation to respond to this post of yours with "Too arrogant, didn't read" is very strong. Do us all a favor and stop trying to handwave aside the opinions and thoughts of your fellow contributors here whenever they're inconvenient to your personal theories. Or we could take the opposite route: VF-19F 72,500 -> 78,500 = 1 digit difference VF-19S 78,950 -> 68,950 = 1 digit difference VF-19S 68,500 -> 68,950 = 2 digit difference We can also illustrate that there's a major shift in thrust from the most recent set of figures: VF-19F 72,500 -> 78,500 = +6,000kgf VF-19S 78,950 -> 68,950 = -10,000kgf WTF! We have a clearly established case for this being a simple typographical error on the part of whoever was doing data entry. One and only one digit was changed in each case, and there's a clear indication of how it went awry. I would very much like to hear your explanation for how with two aerodynamically identical aircraft, the heavier one with less thrust has a higher top speed at altitude and a greater rate of climb. I'd also be very interested to hear your reasons for why, if this "new" number is really official, the U.N. Spacy has suddenly reversed its previously established convention and started giving squadron leaders aircraft that are less capable than the grunt machine. It doesn't hold water Sketchley, no matter how much you want it to. And there is absolutely no evidence of any kind to indicate that this was intended as a revision, given that it runs counter to material on its own sheet in Macross Chronicle, and makes no sense when examined with even the most basic grasp of physics.

Let me point out another serious flaw in your reasoning... the data in brackets doesn't match what's in Chronicle and the Master File book either. So, what we have here is one thrust rating which lines up with the performance data and general Macross conventions regarding the flight performance of "leader" variant fighters (78,950kgf), one thrust rating that was revised a good while ago and is simply no longer valid (68,500kgf), and one thrust rating that not only reeks of "typo" but fails to pass even the most basic common sense evaluation when taken in the context of the other data provided. It hasn't "come full circle", it's a bloody typo. That it's two digits off from the old, revised thrust rating is just a coincidence. The difference from the "revised" number is far smaller. One and only one digit changed in each case. The leading 7 in the VF-19S's 78,950kgf was swapped with a 6, making it 68,950kgf, and either the original number was bumped up from a leading 6 to a leading 7 (68,500 to 78,500) or the VF-19F's original number's second digit (2) was changed to an 8 by mistake (72,500 to 78,500), or likely some combination of the two. Either way, the allegedly "new" numbers don't line up with the other data available. (In both cases, you have a "nearest neighbor" key goof) By the same token, I'd offer two pieces of advice... the first being that if a point of data doesn't make sense in context and runs counter to common sense, it's probably a mistake. The second is that if you're going to try and rationalize the disparity, it would be helpful to find a likely cause for the disparity first, to explain why they've suddenly started going against previously established convention. (On the former note, the VF-19P doesn't have official thrust numbers in Chronicle, so I would be extremely reluctant to take something of the Master File writer's invention as accurate. On the latter note, they don't appear to have ever actually mentioned that the VF-19 had an atmospheric limitation on its engines the way the VF-22 does) This raises an awkward question... if you consider that book unreliable because there's no evidence that Shoji Kawamori was involved in it, why do you consider the VF-19 Master File reliable? There's no evidence that Kawamori had any actual involvement in creating that material either.

Of course, there's also a world of difference between the efforts of someone who has at least some clue of how to create original material based on an existing series, and the feeble efforts of a man who only knows how to rewrite someone else's work. Any way you shake it, Macek didn't have a goddamn clue how to make original material... let alone original material that would appeal to the existing fanbase. It really is perplexing how Robotech fans hold the man up as though he was the messiah of the anime industry but treat every attempt the man made to do something new and original with Robotech as a horrid abortion. You'd think by now they would have cottoned on to the fact that just about everything they profess to love about the Robotech TV series comes from the originals. Given the impression I formed of the man during the few conversations I've had with him about Robotech, I'd say that the only way he'd ever depart the franchise to make way for someone halfway capable would be if he was being escorted out by security. Even then, I suspect he'd still hover around on the periphery and complain about the way the franchise is being run... rather like Tom Bateman continues to do. (Though admittedly Bateman has proven he can actually do something of value for the fans, Tommy hasn't) Pretty much, yeah... and I can't see a company like Harmony Gold that constantly plays it safe and refuses to do anything that doesn't have an immediate return on investment doing something as risky as sacrificing their small, blindly loyal, and extremely belligerent fanbase on a gamble like that. Completely purging the franchise of the old fanbase also means firing Steve Yun, Tommy Yune, and Kevin McKeever, who profess to have been fans before being hired by Harmony Gold. Ditching those essentially means destroying the only parts of Robotech that the existing fanbase cares about, and the only major thing that sets Robotech apart from Macross, Southern Cross, and Mospeada. Macross is, was, and always will be the only part of Robotech that 99% of the fans give a toss about, so Harmony Gold will NEVER EVER get rid of it until they're absolutely forced to do so.

Can't say it comes as any surprise... it's been mired in development hell for ages. I'm surprised they didn't just broom the whole idea and have done with it.

Because that would entail doing three things that Tommy is either incapable of, or just plain unwilling to do: 1.) Admitting to everyone that, while his credentials and achievements as the franchise's creative director far outstrip those of Carl Macek, everything he's accomplished for the Robotech franchise thus far has been for naught. (Understandable. Who wants to be forced to invalidate all of their achievements?) 2.) Owning up to the fact that the "original" Robotech story is a fatally flawed mess of plot holes, dodgy editing, and genuinely lackluster writing that is beyond any mere moral's power to salvage, instead of the universally-revered flawless masterpiece that Harmony Gold is perpetually trying and failing to paint it as... and that as such, rebooting the universe and starting over from scratch is necessary to polish that turd into something halfway marketable. 3.) Setting aside his own COLOSSAL ego and allowing someone who actually has a goddamn clue how to write do the screenplay. No, it's in a slightly different pose this time...

Indeed it does... though you seem to be engaging in a bit of creative misreading to make the data there support your claim. In point of fact, the original VF-19 Compendium entry places the thrust rating of the VF-19F's two FF-2500F engines at 72,500kgf and the thrust rating of the VF-19S's two FF-2550J engines at 78,950kgf. By contrast, the astonishingly unreliable writers at Macross Chronicle claim the VF-19F uses two VF-2550J engines (the engines originally identified as belonging to the VF-19S) at a new, lower thrust rating of 78,500kgf, and that the VF-19S uses two FF-2550X engines (an ass-pull if ever we saw one) rated for 68,950kgf. And your basis for this claim is? The Compendium gives the VF-19S a thrust rating of 78,950kgf to the VF-19F's 72,500kgf, which is consistent with the usual practice of giving "leader" models more powerful engines, the -S variant's higher top speed at altitude, and the -S variant's allegedly superior climb rate from sea level. Not quite... the text in Macross Chronicle indicates that the VF-19F has greater engine thrust than the VF-19S, but for reasons unexplained has an inferior rate of climb and top speed compared to the VF-19S. This makes no logical sense whatsoever. I'm not an expert on aerodynamics, but I can spot bullshit just as easily as the next guy. When you have two aircraft that are virtually identical aerodynamically, the lighter one with the more powerful engines ought to be faster at altitude and have a greater climb rate than the heavier one with the significantly lower thrust-to-weight ratio. For the VF-19F to have engines significantly more powerful than those of the VF-19S in space, and have those same engines be inferior to the VF-19S's in atmosphere (as you're positing) makes no sense... and crosses the line into absurdity when you consider that the VF-19F/S variants we see were supposedly optimized for space combat. Why would the U.N. Spacy give squad/force/team leaders a fighter inferior to the "grunt" model in its primary combat regime? Moreover, why would they do that when their usual practice is to do the exact opposite? Why is that? Let's go with the obvious answer... Macross Chronicle's writers screwed up and made no effort to correct it (not a new development by any means), and the guys who were writing the Master File blindly reiterated their harebrained mistake. On previous models, additional equipment on the leader variant didn't require any such decrease in performance. Thus far, there's no indication that the -S variant has any extra gear we could point the finger at. Um... what's your source for that? Chronicle or the Master File? Yep, it's Master File. If it's the latter, I think simply pointing out that it's a successor to the MAT book says all that needs to be said about its supposed accuracy.

Yeah, more or less. Individual reasons for doing so may vary, but you can expect that most of the people who are actually familiar with Robotech and aren't members of its tiny-yet-fanatical fanbase will tell you not to waste your time on it. In practice, it's not THAT bad, but Robotech's dialogue and story were weak even when they were new, and they've aged like unrefrigerated milk. If you saw any or all of the originals beforehand, it's a safe bet you'll find Robotech somewhere between confusing and downright obnoxious. I'd still say you should watch a few episodes and see for yourself, but don't expect it to wow you. Pretty much... I still maintain that the reason they've switched to this method of late has been that the Masterpiece Collection finally bombed out, and that since the store's cluttered with extremely-limited-edition collectibles that have yet to sell out after a good 2-3 years in the store, they're putting the kibosh on making their own goods and just acting as a reseller for import toys while they wait and pray that Warner will just buy the franchise from them to eliminate the legal hurdles. Well come on... what were you expecting? These ARE the same people who told everyone who would listen (and a few people who wouldn't) that Paramount rushed Transformers 2 out the door for fear that the Robotech movie was going to steal its thunder, and have been claiming that every single event in Hollywood somehow has something to do with the influence of the Robotech movie. These mental cases were actually EXCITED that Sylvain White'd been shown the story treatment.

Probably not, IMO... having Masahiro Chiba as a writer does nothing to legitimize the content in the MAT book, so I can't see why having Kawamori in a vaguely designed role like "supervisor" would be any better. We don't even know if he had any input into the creation of the book's contents, and there's certainly no proof of any kind that he intended to use the book to retcon material from unambiguously official sources like Chronicle and the various art books. Usually, when a franchise produces something like a technical manual, it's non-canon no matter who's writing it. Star Trek is an excellent example of this, with a fair few tech manuals, all of which are non-canon, and many of which were written by major members of the production crew like art directors (Herman Zimmerman), visual effects artists (Doug Drexler), senior illustrators (Rich Sternbach), and scenic art supervisors (Mike Okuda). Unless someone can find a REALLY good explanation for it, the safest assumption to make is that it's a simple typographical error that didn't get caught until they'd already finalized the graphics for that sheet. That they tried to come up with a rationalization, and that it was that weak, smacks of a hasty attempt to amend their error by explaining that the VF-19S really is supposed to have superior performance to the VF-19F without having to delay the issue (for which the article was featured).

Has every error or failure to properly do research been corrected in Chronicle? Hell no. Have they released new sheets to correct art mistakes or fill in data that was omitted in stats blocks before? No. There's a not-inconsiderable body of things in Chronicle that we can definitively say are errors, and we've yet to see a corrected sheet for any of them. Assuming that they meant to do it all along because they haven't made a special exception and published a corrected sheet is unwise in the extreme. (Having an entire sheet misnumbered is a rather more severe error in the grand scheme of things, as that affects the way things are organized into the binders...)

Let's see... the alleged "correction" swaps a single digit in each thrust rating, but it uses the VF-19S's atmospheric thrust rating as though that were the engine's only mode of operation, it doesn't change the weight differential, and comes with a rationalization so poor even a grade schooler's knowledge of aerodynamics is enough to tell you it doesn't hold water. Really, it's hard to make an error MORE obvious without circling it in red ink and writing "VERY POOR. SEE ME AFTER CLASS " next to it. Just like the MAT book before it, the Master File is mechanical design porn. It's meant to be a lot of pretty pictures and some realistic looking diagrams for people who're into that sort of thing (in short, people like us). If they're trying to make it look somewhat realistic (and they are) then it's not going to line up with the animation perfectly due to the animation not always behaving in ways that are obvious and mechanically feasible from a real-world standpoint. I'd say more about the Master File's accuracy and reliability (or more precisely, lack thereof), but the distinction should be obvious and has been beaten to death already.

Yes, they could have... and according to Macek's earliest accounts of how Robotech came to be, such was his original intention. It was, according to him, the network executives they were pitching it to that decided that it wouldn't sell as an anthology series and that the three shows should be combined into a single story. Pretty much, yeah... even now the only part of Robotech that actually sells is Macross. It's just much more obvious these days. See the above... back before Macek got it into his head that if he told a lot of lies and pretended Robotech was the result of a grand creative vision instead of executive meddling, he was saying that it was the network executives who caused it to change format from an anthology series to a "unified" story.

Indeed... though if we take Macek's earliest account at face value, the attempt to broadcast the show in first-run syndication was what compelled the network executives to insist that the three shows be combined instead of having them run back to back as separate features.

Not really, no... the "VF-19E" is something the Master File's writers invented to explain what Basara's VF-19 Kai was customized from. Prior to that, the only mentions of a "VF-19E" I'm aware of are fan-fiction... one from some Japanese fansite circa 2002 (where the author states it's a non-canon variant of his own invention, created by an attempt to Photoshop VF-19 Kai wings and canards onto a VF-19F/S frame), some coincidentally identical work I did while helping a friend develop a setting for Macross RPG he wanted to run, and a "VF-19ES" kitbashed model (also non-canon) that appeared in Model Graphix magazine, and had the backstory of being a custom VF developed to break the speed record over C on a flight from New Edwards AFB on Eden to Edwards AFB on Earth using a prototype enhanced fold booster. To date, the only confirmed official variants of the VF-19 are the YF-19, VF-19A, VF-19F, VF-19S, VF-19 Kai, and VF-19P.

I think you're thinking of the YF-25 Prophecy...

This makes me RAGE Eh? Where'd you come up with that? When last I checked, Shadow Chronicles's teaser comic was a straight-up continuation/do-over of an existing part of Robotech II's comic book adaptation by Jason and John Waltrip. It's probably more accurate to say that Sentinels is pseudocanon... some of the events obviously HAD to still happen for things to be what they are, but deleting Sentinels from the continuity outright would irreparably screw over RTSC's setting and... *snicker*... story. To be brutally frank... what they're missing out on is some of the worst-written sci-fi outside of Battlefield Earth. The episode outlines in Robotech Art 3 are pretty awful, and mostly consist of what the writers no doubt fondly imagined would be gritty, pulse-pounding action and gripping drama. The plot can best be summed up as the continuing adventures of Rick Hunter, as he leads a crusade of saintly humans across the galaxy to liberate a bunch of backwards, cliche little planets from the domination of a pack of cartoonishly evil space lobsters and their henpecked leader. Part of the problem was, I think, that Harmony Gold insisted on changing writers early on. According to Macek, the writers Tatsunoko supplied for the project were completely baffled by Robotech and had no idea why anyone would combine three unrelated TV shows like that. It apparently became an issue and made it hard for them to understand how Robotech's sagas fit together, and they made the decision to call in (much less talented) American writers to do the job instead.

Then why did you respond? You could've just let it be instead of calling attention to it and trying to ensure you had the last word, and it would've gone away all on its own... Courtesy of Talos, I've been reading the bit about the GU-15(A) gun pod, and it's looking like they couldn't decide on a caliber, but they gave us just about everything else we'd want to know... muzzle velocity, range, and magazine capacity. Surprisingly small on that last note (a mere 150 rounds, if I read it correctly on my brief glance-through), but as Talos brought to my attention the magazine looks like a similar setup to the one off the FN P90. A strange choice, but it makes sense given the way the gunpod's set up.

Didn't we already have an answer for that? It's been a while, but I remember reading an explanation that said that the reason the VF-19F/S had a redesigned main wing and had an extra bank of verniers in place of the canards was to maximize its performance in space, where it was decided it would see most if not all of its combat usage.

Tell me, did you get the same weird feeling that we and the writers of this book seem to have been working from each other's notes? But that really does nothing to counteract the simple fact that the percentage of stuff that makes sense and is in line with other publications is utterly swamped by the sheer amount of stuff that isn't. The first volume in the series, the VF-1 Master File, had a few sections that were obviously reprinted from the old (and thoroughly unreliable) MAT book. When we find ourselves confronted with a host of sources that all generally agree on the details, and then one or two books that are out in left field contradicting just about everything else, determining which is correct ought to be a no-brainer. Consistency over flash every time. The Master File books are damn pretty to look at, and might be based loosely on official info, but I don't think we should go labeling them official. (The Wiki writers seem to be of the same mind, lumping the new stuff from Master File in the same category as magazine variants like the VF-25VJ Vajra Aggressor and VF-19ES Mystery Ship II)

Wasn't he also responsible for the godawful character designs used in Robotech II: the Sentinels?

Yeah, I know... sketchley already told me about it. It looks like they were unable to decide which year was the correct one, and decided to split the difference between the date derived from a literal application of "80 years later" (2090) and the date that the OVA's creators supplied via the official timeline made to connect DYRL, M2036, and M:ELS (2092). It's just another strange goof, like what they accidentally did (and then tried rationalizing) with the VF-19's thrust ratings. Really? That's bizarre... I wish they'd managed to do a Game and Advanced Valkyrie sheet for the VF-1 Attack Valkyrie and VF-4 Siren. Oh well...